Hungry Ghosts

by Peggy Blair

  It took more than five years before the various authorities could even agree on the structure of a Manitoba-Ontario Joint Operations Force. When they did, O’Malley argued it should at least have “one bejesus Indian” on it. Pike thought that the fact that he was the token Indian was pretty funny.

  When he became police chief, O’Malley insisted that Pike apply. He said he didn’t care about Charlie’s past. “That’s all behind you now, lad. Old history.”

  But it isn’t, thought Pike. Not if he’s making me go back.

  14

  Blue lights twinkled in the dawn like a string of Christmas lights. A dead body attracted swarms of bored policemen almost as quickly as it summoned flies.

  At least twenty white fianas lined the sides of the highway. The Peugeots had been tourist rental cars before the government appropriated them to the Cuban National Revolutionary Police in the late nineties. A half dozen caballitos leaned sideways on rusted kickstands.

  Inspector Ramirez pulled his car onto the shoulder. He and Espinoza got out, slamming the doors hard to secure them. The dead woman teetered behind the two men as they walked towards the roped-off area. She hobbled a little in the dirt, her high heels catching in the ruts.

  Just inside the trees, Ramirez observed several plastic numbers stuck upright in the forest floor. Each one indicated that Hector Apiro and his technicians had found something of interest, not to mention a supply of plastic markers.

  Apiro kneeled on the ground beside the body, which rested on a tarp. Ramirez and Espinoza approached the small pathologist. The ghost followed close behind. She peeked over Espinoza’s shoulder and covered her eyes with her fingers.

  Ramirez leaned over the rope to look at the corpse. He winced at the exposed bones, the holes that had once been eyes, a nose. The clothing was badly stained by heat and rain.

  “Good morning, Ricardo,” said Apiro. He stood up to greet them, brushing the dirt from his pants. “It looks like she was asphyxiated, but it isn’t always possible to identify the exact cause of death in such cases. I should know more after the autopsy. I’m assuming that this case is the priority now and not the man who washed up on the beach?”

  “Yes,” said Ramirez. “We have no reports of missing foreigners.” Until they did, or until Hector Apiro decided the man had been murdered, the dead man was technically outside the jurisdiction of Major Crimes.

  Looking at the woman’s ruined body, Ramirez was glad Francesca was out of town. His workload had just increased exponentially. He glanced up, half expecting to see the full moon glow in the morning sky.

  “Was she raped, Dr. Apiro?” asked Espinoza.

  The Cuban Penal Code had recharacterized sexual assault as “lascivious abuse.” But outside the courtroom, the police called it what it was. “Llamar al pan, pan y al vino, vino,” was the saying. Bread is bread and wine is wine. Rape was rape.

  Apiro shook his large head. “We may never know. We use a stain to look for spermatozoa, but the acid phosphate test is only presumptive. Semen degrades quickly even without all this heat; the maximum detection time is only about fourteen hours. The prostate specific antigen test is far more accurate. If we had one.” Due to the heightened embargo, the shortage of equipment and forensic supplies was even worse than usual.

  “The good news,” said Apiro, “is that her histology card was in her purse. Not all that helpful now, is it? A bit late for organ donation. Patrol ran the name for me. Antifona Conejo. Well-known to the police, as you would say.”

  “Prostitution?” asked Ramirez.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  All Cubans were legally required to carry biomedical information under the “voluntary” organ donation program. Looking at what was left of the body, Ramirez had to agree with Apiro. This woman was long past being a contributor.

  Apiro handed Ramirez a plastic exhibit bag with the victim’s card in it. Ramirez pulled out his cell phone and called the police switchboard. He asked to be patched through to Natasha Delgado, the only female detective on his squad. Reading from the histology card, he gave Delgado the woman’s date of birth and her address.

  “Pull all the files we have on her, Natasha, will you? Have Patrol take you over to her address to inform the family of her death. Make sure to ask when they last saw her and who she was with. But approach it delicately. They may not know what she did for a living.”

  “There was a cigarette butt near the remains with smudges of what appears to be red lipstick,” said Apiro. “A Chinese brand. Shuang Xi. It means Double Happiness. There was a purse beside the body too. It had the usual items in it. Lipstick and a powder compact. A package of condoms. A thin wooden stick. I’m not sure what she used it for. Perhaps for manicures. I would guess she was mulata, from her complexion and hair.”

  Ramirez wondered how Apiro could determine the colour of her skin. The woman’s head was almost black from bloating. The scarf around her neck was tied so tightly it had cut into the flesh, or what was left of it. A cloud of flies buzzed around the corpse. Apiro waved them away.

  Ramirez looked at the ghost again. Her complexion seemed darker than that of a mulata, but it was difficult to see her properly in the shadows cast by the morning sun. The flowers on the blue mahoe trees were already changing from primrose to orange. By evening they’d be red, almost the same shade as the ghost’s lipstick.

  Prostitutes were usually black. Maria Vasquez, the woman Apiro lived with, was an exception. With her streaked blonde hair and pale complexion, she could pass for white. But she was hardly typical.

  “And then there is this.” The pathologist carefully untied the scarf and dangled it from his gloved hand. “Another stocking.”

  Ramirez looked more carefully at the ghost peering over Espinoza’s shoulder. What he had first thought was a black scarf tied in a bow around her neck was a sheer nylon stocking. “Prima Verrier’s killer tied a stocking around her throat too,” he explained to Espinoza.

  “There is another similarity, Ricardo,” said Apiro. “These small round impressions in the dirt.”

  Ramirez stepped closer to the cordoned-off area. He squatted to look at the marks beside the plastic numbers. They were evenly spaced, about five feet apart.

  Espinoza crouched beside him. “What are they?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure,” said Ramirez. “What do you think, Hector?”

  Apiro shrugged. “At first, I thought they might be from the victim’s shoes, but the heel on her shoes is wider.”

  “There were marks like this at the first crime scene,” said Ramirez.

  “Prima,” said Espinoza, raising his eyebrows. “That’s ironic, isn’t it, if this turns out to be the second victim?”

  “Yes, I suppose it is,” said Ramirez, nodding slowly. Prima, in Latin, meant “the first.”

  “Is that what he used to choke her with, the nylon?”

  “No.” Ramirez shook his head. “He used his hands.”

  Ramirez glanced at the jinetera again. Her hand went to the stocking around her neck. She straightened the bow. “She was a beautiful woman, Señora Verrier. But not so pretty after a month in the bush, I can tell you that.”

  The dead jinetera shivered. She rubbed her arms as if she were cold.

  15

  While her mother napped, Celia Jones dialed the number on the medical appointment card she’d found behind a magnet on the fridge. A university switchboard operator answered. Jones asked for Maylene Kesler and was surprised to be put through to the Department of Environmental Genetics.

  The receptionist managed to sound both weary and impatient at the same time. “I’m sorry, Dr. Kesler is out of town. Can I help you?”

  “My name is Celia Jones. Dr. Kesler was at a clinic in White Harbour a few weeks ago. She tested my mother. She was supposed to call her back with the results. I was wondering if they’re ready. Emma Jones?”
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  “Dr. Kesler has been in White Harbour for several days, Ms. Jones. She’ll be meeting all the patients she examined in person to talk about her findings. I’m sure she’ll call your mother to arrange a time to see her. She has dozens of appointments to line up.”

  “Is there a number where I can reach her?”

  “She has a private cell phone but I’m not supposed to give out the number. She’s been very busy. You’re not the first person who’s called here looking for her.”

  “Thanks,” said Jones, disappointed. She was about to hang up when a thought crossed her mind. “Does Dr. Kesler specialize in Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s?”

  “Dr. Kesler? No. She’s an expert in envirogenomics.”

  “Envirogenomics?”

  “The effects of the environment on genes.”

  Jones thought for a moment. “Is there someone I can speak to about her research?”

  Dr. Martin Strasser took the call. “I’m sorry to hear about your mother’s symptoms,” he said. “I’m afraid your husband’s right; it doesn’t sound like Parkinson’s. I’ve been doing research into Alzheimer’s for years. It’s a terrible, devastating illness. But it doesn’t usually affect Aboriginal people. We think there may be a protective effect of a gene or genes in the Native American population that the rest of us don’t have.”

  “My mother isn’t Aboriginal, Dr. Strasser.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought she was. That’s the focus of Dr. Kesler’s work. Indigenous populations.”

  “I’m confused,” said Jones. “If that’s the case, why test my mother?”

  “I have no idea,” said Strasser. “I know that she’s looking into the environmental components of a number of cluster illnesses in that area, but I’m not completely familiar with the details of her research. Maybe she was testing non-Aboriginal people as a control population. But I’m afraid you’d have to ask her that yourself.” There was an undertone to his words. Celia Jones got the sense that Dr. Kesler wasn’t particularly well liked.

  “Okay. Well, thanks for your time, Dr. Strasser. Oh, before I let you go . . .” Jones lowered her voice so her mother wouldn’t overhear. “Are there any new treatments for Alzheimer’s? Anything that can reverse it, or at least slow it down?”

  “Not yet, I’m afraid. Although there is some new research in the United States that’s quite exciting. There’s a drug that balances the transport of heavy metals across cell membranes. It seems to reverse the effects of Alzheimer’s in mice within days. I’m hopeful the manufacturers can get it to market eventually. And of course, that it will work as well in people as it does in rodents.”

  “There’s nothing we can do, then, if that’s what she has?”

  “We find that social interaction helps. Computer games, painting. Even jigsaw puzzles. And exercise. Some studies suggest that caffeine can delay the onset of symptoms. Make sure she drinks lots of tea and coffee.”

  “Believe me,” said Jones, frowning, “she’s trying.”

  16

  Inspector Ramirez remembered the first crime scene all too well. Prima Verrier’s skeletonized remains had been discovered almost exactly a year earlier. Her killer left her body in the woods beside the Avenida San Francisco, north of the nearly abandoned Parque Lenin, not far from its Chinese-built amusement park.

  The late Detective Rodriguez Sanchez was dispatched to the wrong address. He wasn’t remotely amused when Patrol mistakenly delivered him to Lennon Park downtown. A bronze statue of the dead Beatle sat on a wooden park bench even though John Lennon had never visited Cuba. A distressed security guard kept replacing and removing the statue’s wire eyeglasses, insisting he knew nothing about a woman’s body. Sanchez, of course, being Sanchez, didn’t believe him. Luckily, by the time the error was discovered, the man wasn’t badly injured.

  Señora Verrier was only twenty-three when she was murdered. She was studying to be an engineer at the University of Havana and worked as a prostitute to help feed her family. She’d gone out after class to meet a client and never came home. Her body was found by a cyclist riding a heavy Chinese-made bicycle, as he looked for a shortcut through the woods.

  Ramirez had stood beside Apiro, horrified, while Detective Sanchez searched the tall grass for evidence.

  “Are you sure it’s a woman?” Ramirez asked. “I thought the skull would be smaller.”

  “It’s a myth that men have big heads, despite their egos,” the small surgeon laughed. “But the skull is actually not considered all that useful these days when it comes to determining gender. There are far too many subjective traits. The innominate bone of the pelvis is far more reliable. Of course, the fact that she’s wearing a skirt, or at least what’s left of one, helps.”

  Apiro’s technicians had used shovels and trowels to excavate the site—there was no fuel for backhoes. The digging was time-­consuming, perhaps the reason the killer had left his victim lying on the ground.

  “When a body isn’t buried, decomposition takes place quickly,” Apiro explained. “There are two hundred and six bones in the adult skeleton. Many are quite small. Fingers, toes, even teeth, eventually loosen and sink into the ground. Sometimes birds and animals carry them off. That’s why we need to look under the topsoil.”

  Along with a few small body parts, the technicians found a cigarette butt buried in the dirt. It was Sanchez who discovered the woman’s purse in nearby vegetation, where it had been carried off by feral dogs. There were chew marks in the leather.

  “If leather purses are good enough for dogs to eat, maybe we should start boiling them for soup,” Sanchez joked. “Purses, I mean. The dogs are too thin. They would have to taste better than whatever that meat substitute is in our rations. Remember in the Special Period, when they started calling it population meat? ”

  “I always wondered what part of the population it came from,” said Ramirez.

  From the ground where he was kneeling, Apiro snorted.

  Despite a meticulous ground search, that was all they’d uncovered. No blood, no hair, no fibres, no fingerprints on anything, not even the victim’s. The fact that the skeleton had pink teeth pointed to strangulation, Apiro explained at the autopsy: erythrocytes, or red blood cells, had been released into Prima Verrier’s dentin.

  But without a forensic trail to follow, there was nowhere to go. It was Ramirez’s only cold case since taking over the Major Crimes Unit.

  But now there was another victim. Ramirez’s adrenaline surged—he might have a second chance.

  “How long has she been dead?” Ramirez asked Apiro.

  “Given the degree of decomposition, I’d say at least two weeks. I found arthropods in the remains, which may help narrow down that time frame. There’s a visiting forensic entomologist at the Centre for Legal Medicine. Dr. Yeung. I’m sure she can help us identify them.”

  “Arthropods?” said Ramirez.

  “Blow flies,” said Apiro. He brushed one from his forehead. “I found what might be beetle larvae as well, but I’m not an expert.”

  “What is a forensic entomologist?” Espinoza asked.

  “They study the insects that colonize bodies,” Apiro explained. “They work back generationally to determine a time of death based on their life cycles.”

  The ghost stepped away from Espinoza. She bent her index fingers, mimicking a camera. She pretended to snap several shots of the body. She stopped and shook her head sadly.

  Ramirez turned to look up and down Airport Road. Traffic was getting heavier as the sun rose. A steady stream of taxis and air-­conditioned tourist buses transported turistas to the José Martí International Airport. Every truck that drove by had passengers squeezed in the back, some holding bicycles.

  “He took a chance, didn’t he?” said Espinoza. “Leaving her this close to the highway. It’s busy no matter what time of day.”

  Ramirez nodded.r />
  “I have one question for both of you,” the small pathologist said, straightening one of his short legs painfully as he stood up. “Where did he get the nylons?”

  It was a good question, thought Ramirez, one so obvious he hadn’t thought of it. But Hector Apiro lived with a prostitute. He was probably more conscious of the shortage of women’s hosiery than any detective.

  If Francesca was right, there were no nylons to be found in Havana, except in shops that catered to tourists at prices few Cubans could afford.

  Ramirez looked at the dead woman. She bent her leg and posed for him, displaying her bare skin again. She wasn’t wearing nylons when she was murdered, he thought. Apiro was right. They needed to know where the hosiery came from.

  Apiro pulled the stocking over his gloved hand to reveal a narrow black seam at the back. “I don’t think these are all that common anymore, are they?”

  “I haven’t seen one in years,” Ramirez said. He remembered stockings like this in old pin-up pictures and calendars. Shapely women wearing garter belts, leaning against the hoods of Chevrolets, back when the Chevys were new. The cars were still being driven, fifty years later, but the pin-up girls were in their seventies.

  “Where’s the other one?” asked Espinoza.

  “Let’s hope it’s not tied around another victim’s throat,” said Ramirez. “Fernando, when we get back to town, I want you to sign out a police car. Check the stores in the tourist hotels and malls and see if any of them sell stockings like these. It shouldn’t take long. There aren’t many places left that carry women’s clothing.”